Need suggestions for a fast way to transfer files to external drive

I am preparing to transfer about 100GB or more data from an internal harddisk to an external harddisk. I have tried to transfer the data to an external USB 2.0 harddisk. However, the process takes many hours !

Could anyone suggest a faster solution for such a transfer. Does external network drive offer a better solution, or there are alternative solutions ? What hardware/software are best suited for such propose ?

easiest, if you have the correct port, is a firewire port - most external HDDs come with these nowadays - If not, make sure the one you purchase does, as well as make sure that your computer has one...

Using USB 2 shouldn't take that long. Are you sure the port you are using really is running at USB 2 speed? What OS are you using and how are you copying the files from the internal drive to the external one?

I am using a Windows 2000 Professional OS, connecting to an external MAXTOR 160GB harddisk through a USB 2.0 port/cable. I am not using any backup program and just using the windows explorer to copy about 100GB of data. The copying is a file by file process and takes many hours.

I haven't used backup program as I just need an identical cloning of the files from one drive to another. Is there any software/hardware that can handle the task in a more efficient way.

The SATA II solution is a good one. However, is there just a better workaround for USB 2.0

Are you sure your PC is capable of USB 2, or is it just a USB 1 port? If it is around 4 years old or older, that is probably the case. You should then get a PCI USB 2 card and connect the external HD to that. If it is a laptop then there are PCCard USB 2 adapters neither are very expensive, and USB 2 is a lot faster than USB 1. It isn't as fast as IDE or SATA, but it gets close to IDE.

If you open the device manager look for USB, and you should at least see something like "Enhanced USB". Otherwise if you can post the motherboard model we might also be able to find out. But since this is a win2k PC I'm assuming it isn't the newest, and then it quite likely doesn't have USB 2 yet. There is often also an indication when you insert a device that is capable of USB 2 speeds. In the taskbar you then will often get a message similar to "using a fast USB device on a slow connection" (don't know the exact wording).

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